


A History of Violence

by Indigo2831



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: #BloodThinnersSuck, 118 firefam, 3.05 Rage, 9-1-1 3x05, Buck and Eddie's Co-Dependent Bromance, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Gen, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Prompt Fill, slightly canon divergent
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-13 22:44:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21237029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Indigo2831/pseuds/Indigo2831
Summary: Tag to 3.05's "Rage" and a prompt-fill: "Can you please write a fanfic where Bobby yells at Buck and calls him a disappointment and then the next day Buck is really subdued and doesn’t call anybody by their nicknames? And instead of calling Bobby his name or even cap, he just calls him Captain Nash?"  This is slightly canon divergent based on 3.06 "Monsters."Buck discovers Eddie's new hobby.  Angst ensues.





	A History of Violence

**Author's Note:**

> If I'm going to write tags, I have to crank them out faster. This one is slightly canon divergent, but just barely. Let me know what you think.

Buck was often enamored by people. His (self-diagnosed) sex addiction was a snowballing bi-product of his adoration and innocent crushes. With Eddie, Buck was attracted to his type-A restraint and his ability to compartmentalize and keep a level head. He befriended him, because Eddie was a great guy, a badass, but also because he hoped to learn some more restraint and responsibility through osmosis. So even after weeks of averted eyes, poorly explained bruises, and dropping off the grid, the last place he expected to track his even-keeled best friend was a grungy street-fighting arena on the outskirts of the city, complete with torches, white dudes with dreadlocks, and a ring forged out of smashed cars and old tires.

Buck blended in with the crowd. The tang of cheap weed and alcohol rancidly mingled with the aroma of fuel exhaust and blood. He had countless nights of insanity behind him, and the unplanned tattoos and nasty scars as awesome evidence. While he wasn’t going to begrudge anyone their youth, as a first responder, all he can see now are red flags, worst-case scenarios, and the inevitable tragedies. He confiscated a few pipes from kids who weren’t old enough to tell the difference between a firefighter and policemen’s badge. “Take up graffiti or something more productive than...crack,” Buck said, tossing the pipes in a nearby barrel fire. “Go home before I call your parents,” he threatened. They bolted without hesitation.

He leaned against a rudimentary fence constructed of old tires and watched the carnage as men and women went at each other like modern gladiators. Buck wasn’t a stranger to fights. He could handle himself if he needed to--having a hot older sister, absentee parents and a reckless streak constituted a pretty dire need--but at least that type of impetuousness had run its course years ago. And after what happened with Maddie, he had a particular sensitivity to any kind of violence.

Watching Eddie fight made Buck nauseous. While he got his adrenaline fix and catharsis from training and firefighting and bouldering, Eddie clearly got his from violence...or getting his ass kicked. Buck had to physically restrain himself from into the battle when Eddie was cornered or downed. But his friend usually rallied with a scrappiness that would’ve made Buck proud if he wasn’t so horrified.

This was an unrestrained kind of release that was a symptom of a much bigger problem. Like not having a best friend to vent to. Or losing your wife less than a year ago. Or having a son who required expensive care.

Eddie fought twice--losing once terribly and having to be physically pulled off of another--but when he signed up for a third, blood dripping from his nose, knuckles jaggedly torn, and wobbling from exhaustion, Buck had had enough. He jogged over to the referee, a large tattooed man with an iPad in his hand and airpods in his ears. He was clearly smarter than sheltered suburban kids who wanted to get high on a school night. “You know that guy, Diaz? Cancel his next fight.”

“You gonna take his place?”

Buck dropped a bundle of cash in the man’s tablet. “Do I look like I get punched in the head for fun?”

He eyed the birthmark over his eye. “Yeah, actually.” He pocketed the cash and tapped with exasperatedly on his tablet. “You’re friend’s clear. Have fun tellin’ him. The guy’s a freakin’ maniac.”

“Him I can handle. Thanks, dude.” Buck was surprised when the guy reciprocated his fist bump and left to collect Eddie.

His friend paced with agitation while hydrating with a forty-ounce instead of water. Buck’s obscenities were swallowed by the booing of the crowd as a fighter opted to tap out instead of being repeatedly hammer-fisted in the face.

Buck took advantage of Eddie’s distraction. “I don’t know what the hell you think you’re doing, Eddie, but it’s time to go.”

Eddie bounced on the balls of his feet like Mike Tyson between rounds. Buck could almost see the waves of aggression wafting off him as he approached, an aura of a dark, chaotic red. Something bleak and anxious flashed across Eddie’s face as Buck drew closer, but it vanished in the space between moments.

“Eddie, I don’t know what’s going on with you, and that’s on me, man. Let’s head out, okay? We can talk about it.”

“I’m good,” Eddie snapped over whoops from the crowd.

They both turned to see a blue-haired woman stomping on another woman’s kidney.

“I think we’re pretty freakin’ far from good. You have a shift in four hours. And I’d like you to show up with all of your teeth.”

Eddie turned his back to him and shadowboxed the air, shutting him out.

“I got you out of your last fight, so let’s go get some tacos. You can yell at me some more. We’ll make a night of it...the Bash Buck Bonanza! I’ll go first: my hair is stupid, even I don’t really like it.”

Eddie smashed a fist against the tailgate of his truck took several intimidating steps forward. “I’m not Christopher or a forty-year-old cougar--that crap doesn’t work on me. You want to do everything on your timetable. I don’t want to talk to you right now. I don’t want to see you right now, so stop whatever you think you’re doing and leave me alone.”

Buck was undeterred. If the violence in a scrapyard full of pancaked cars, miles away from the city had alerted Buck’s internal alarms, Eddie’s behavior and temperament had triggered Vegas-sized neon signs. “Let me take you home and if you promise never to come back here, and I’ll leave you alone. This such a bad idea, and not to mention really dangerous. You have a son, Eddie.”

Eddie’s eyes flashed with something more wicked than rage. “A bad idea would be losing track of him in a tsunami, but we can’t all do that.”

Buck’s nostrils flared. His fists clenched. His heart, which was held together by Maddie’s check-in calls and last-change Hail Mary of a lawsuit, splintered a little more. If anything, it spurred him on more, because he knew a rationally-minded Eddie would never use that against him, not after going out of his way to assure Buck that he trusted him with Christopher and that he didn’t blame him. He’d seen it for what it was: Eddie hurting Buck in the worst possible way in order to accomplish his self-destructive goal.

Buck closed the space between him, unafraid to use his size to his advantage. “Get the in damn truck. Now.”

Something grim and nefarious glinted in Eddie’s eyes, and he charged Buck, shoving him away with impressive strength.

Buck stumbled into a guy so well-built it was like tripping into sculpted cement. He opened his mouth to apologize, but the hulking man apparently loved living up to the cliche of his intimidating appearance, and threw a vicious punch. Buck threw his upper body backward to dodge the blow. He felt the bony tip of a muscle scrap harshly against his upper lip. Buck pushed him away and deflected a second attack with a few soccer-style kicks. Ridiculous but effective. The violence rippled throughout the crowd like falling dominoes. People, charged with alcohol and mayhem, entered the fray until it was an all-out riot.

Buck deflected a few more blows but caught an elbow to the chest. There were too many arms and faces and legs to even know where it came from. Instead, he extricated himself from chaos, bobbing and weaving his way through the crowd to find Eddie. After more than a year of working in tandem, Buck and Eddie could near-telepathic communication when it was needed. A mere flicker of eyes and Buck and Eddie took off towards Eddie’s truck.

Buck slid in the driver’s seat truck and pushed the Start button. Eddie dove in as Buck gunned the engine, honking the horn to clear a path. No matter how eager the crowd was to throttle each other, they at least had enough sense not to get in the way of a moving two-ton vehicle.

He drove slowly away from the fight, back onto the main road, and towards the sunrise, hugging the curves of the highway. Neither of them spoke. Buck drove until he reached the city and the light hummed blue around them.

Buck pulled into the first open gas station he saw and wordlessly headed inside to grab supplies. He re-entered the car with a slamming of the door, and they sat in silence again, listening to each other breathe, and the distance metallic shuffle of a train moving over tracks.

He wasn’t sure was inspired him to act. Maybe it was the mounting tension or the shifting light from the sunrise. Maybe it was the need to do something instead of steep in his best friend’s pain. He scooped a portion of the three-pound bag of ice into an extra plastic bag and handed it to Eddie. “Here, ice up.” He set a large styrofoam cup of coffee in the cupholder. “Sober up.”

Buck slurped on an Icee before he made a second icepack, pressing it to his chest. Eddie was unable to hide his concern. “Are you hurt?”

“Barely,” Buck admitted. “Hashtag Blood Thinners Suck.”

“What I said, Buck, I’m sorry.”

He turned to look at his best friend, someone he hadn’t spoken to in nearly a month, and searched himself for anger, but found nothing but an expanding reservoir of sadness and guilt.

“Hitting me would’ve hurt less,” Buck said with a humorless laugh, “but forget it.” It was a card that Eddie would always have to play, and some masochistic part of Buck was glad it had been spent. At least he knew he could handle it. “I’ve been a shitty friend, man. I didn’t mean for everything to get so out of control. The lawsuit was just a way to fix it. I didn’t realize it would be so...personal.”

“You told him personal stuff about us, Buck. How’d you think we’d react?”

“I totally did, and I’m an idiot, but he has investigators, too. A lot of that stuff--Bobby’s suspicion, Chimney’s accident--is public record. It’s not hard to find.” Buck scratched his cheek. “Is this really about the lawsuit, Eddie? Because what I saw back there...man, that wasn’t you.”

Eddie’s obsession with silence had returned.

“This can go two ways: you can be mad at me, and I’ll follow you around like a shadow until you either put in for a transfer, file a restraining order or surrender talk to me. OR, you can save me a lot of work and just talk to me.”

“You’re an ass,” Eddie said, exasperated.

“Yup. You were right in that grocery store. I have only been seeing my side. Granted, that side includes being crushed by a firetruck and nearly dying every other week, but your life has gone on too. You’ve been through stuff, too, and I should have realized that.”

“Yeah, I have. My best friend got crushed by a firetruck and nearly died in a tsunami,” Eddie’s voice was slightly nasally from the icepack pressed to his nose.

“And your wife died,” Buck supplied with caution.

Eddie’s head thunked against the headrest.

Shannon’s death had been more than six months ago. Buck had done his best to support Eddie through it, but the second surgery was harder than the first, thanks to the bone grafts, and rehabbing his leg was a grueling and full-time job. Buck should have been better at multitasking. “You can talk about that. With me. If you want, I mean, my girlfriends tend to flee the continent, but I can listen or-or we can find you a counselor.”

“The last damn thing I want to do is talk. I need to keep the trains running. I need to take care of my son. I need to go to work. I need to keep going,” Eddie said, rubbing his forehead.

“How’s that working out for you, Eddie?” Buck asked honestly.

“I’m just a little...amped, and I need something to rage against.”

“I can take it, Eddie. But I can’t take you street fights in the middle of the night when no one knows where you are. This is dangerous and stupid and unhealthy, and you’re none of those things. You’re a father, man. You can’t take chances like this, and this is coming from the poster boy for bad decisions.”

“You're right about that. Buck, you’re on active duty and those blood thinners when a simple fall could kill you. Why don’t you value your own damn life?”

“Is that what this is about?”

“_I can’t lose anyone else!_” Eddie hollered.

Eddie flung his icepack at the dashboard with such ferocity that the cheap plastic bag burst, and sending shards of crystalline ice throughout the car. He exited the truck, slamming the door so hard, the windows rattled.

Buck flinched at the tremor in Eddie’s voice, and rawness of his confession. He got out of the truck, expecting to chase Eddie down to the street or find him fighting a hobo. However, he was sitting against the back of the tailgate, head in his hands. Buck climbed in and stared up indigo swirls of colors against a plane of slate blue light. “I’m sorry, Eddie. We’ve both had a shit year. And I haven’t made it any easier. But you can’t run from this no matter how much you want to,” Buck said. “Believe me, I have tried to run from nightmares about what happened to me, but it doesn't work. You gotta push through. You have to feel it or it’s going to kill you, Eddie.”

“I...don’t know how. I’ve always been told--growing up and in the Army--to keep moving forward. To shake it off, and keep going. But it’s not working. I’m pissed...and I’m s-sad. And I don’t know how to navigate this.”

Buck placed a hand on Eddie’s back. “We’ll find something that works, Eddie, and that’s safer than live-action Mortal Kombat, okay?”

He nodded, stealthily wiping his eyes. “We’re going to have to do that after shift because we have to be at work in like, two hours,” Eddie grimaced. “Kill me.”

Buck yawned as he climbed into the cab and shifted Eddie’s truck into gear. “Next time you decide to have a breakdown, can you do it at a reasonable hour?”

Eddie burst into laughter, spraying coffee on his dashboard, and hugged his tender ribs. “Damn, I missed your dumbass, Buckley.”

*911*

It was pure luck that their shift was a slow one. Eddie got some much-needed sleep while Buck knocked out his list of totally unnecessary chores, which included scrubbing the grout in the showers with a toothbrush, grocery shopping, doing an inventory of the storeroom and scrubbing down all of the trucks. Buck hadn’t expected any less from Bobby, and took his retaliation in stride.

Eddie found Buck cleaning the glass walls in the locker room. “Hey, man, let me see your chest.”

“You better have dollar bills, man. I don’t give the goods away for free.”

“I want to check on the bruising,” Eddie said as he pulled on gloves. His stethoscope was draped around his neck.

Buck had been on the receiving end of Eddie’s Army Medic doppelganger once or twice and knew it was a force to be reckoned with. He straddled the bench, sliding back so Eddie could do the same. He shucked off his shirt and tried to get a good view of what had been a slight crimson smudge a few hours earlier. Eddie winced in sympathy, touching the borders of the bruise. “The bleeding spread a little bit, but it’s not too bad. Does it hurt?”

“It’s a little comfortable.”

“You haven’t difficulty breathing, chest pains or anything like that?” Eddie asked as he reached for his stethoscope.

“Not at all.”

“Would you tell me if you had?” Eddie questioned without waiting for the answer. “Deep breath.”

Buck submitted to Eddie’s examination and only called balked when Eddie reached for his blood pressure cuff. “I will slap you,” Buck threatened. With a toothy grin, he offered, “free of charge.”

Eddie stowed his supplies and pulled off his gloves. “I think you’ll live.”

Buck tossed a glove at Eddie and got dressed. He didn’t realize Bobby was leaning against the doorjamb until he was buckled his belt. Eddie packed up his med bag.

“Hey, Cap,” Buck said innocently. “Dinner ready?”

“You’ve been back to work for less than five shifts, and you’re already relying on our medics? We haven’t even had a call today,” Bobby said, outraged. “This is why the department didn’t want you back. The medication makes you a liability!”

Eddie stood up, hand raised. “Cap, I don’t think you understand. See, I…”

“No, Eddie, let Captain finish!” Buck interrupted, crossing his arms in challenge.

“I just...you’re such a disappointment, Buck. I stuck my head out for you again and again, and now we’re stuck with a firefighter who can’t fight fires because it endangers the entire crew. Maybe I made a mistake bringing you back here.”

Buck had endured pure hell just to get his shield back, even if that meant scrubbing toilets and being exiled from the 118. He could take it the conversations stopping when he entered the room or people outright leaving. He could even deal with working the wench or crowd control on calls, because he knew he’d broken a trust with the entire squad, and that eventually there would be a call when he needed Buck’s particularly badass set of skills, and he would prove to Bobby, the 118, and the entire LAFD that he could do the job safely. And if he couldn’t, he’d already signed a directive that cleared the LAFD of any blame.

But Bobby’s grudge was unprofessional and it was now breaching into the personal. And Buck felt like he’d seen Eddie the night before, wild and aflame with anger and the need to punch things.

“I’m a disappointment?! I don’t think I am,” Buck said with lethal calmness. “A disappointment would have pointed out that the bomber who blew up the firetruck that broke both bones in my leg was seeking retaliation against you. A disappointment would point out that I’m only on the blood thinners because of the surgeries--PLURAL--to fix my leg. A disappointment would point out that if I hadn’t been blown up, I wouldn’t even need to be on blood thinners or and I wouldn't have been at the pier during a freakin’ tsunami, and wouldn’t be labeled some kind of walking chaos magnet,” Buck explained with an odd and dangerous calm. “And a disappointment certainly wouldn’t have turned down $5 million dollars from the city just because he wanted his freakin’ job back. I’m a lot of things, _Captain Nash_, but the least of which is a disappointment.”

Buck stormed out of the locker room overcome with every ugly emotion and impulse he’d been fighting for the last six months. He wasn’t sure where he was going. He just headed towards sunlight and turned right at the sight of green. He braced himself against the building of the firehouse, heaving with unadulterated anger. Before he could think, he drew his fist back and launched it at the sand-sprayed concrete.

A hand caught it before it smashed into the wall. “Hashtag Blood Thinners Suck,” Eddie offered with a tight smile. “You didn’t have to cover for me with Bobby. You know he’s just scared.”

Buck waved him off.

“You wanna talk about that or…?”

“Nope.”

“Cool cool,” Eddie said. He squinted against the harsh sun as he leaned against the wall.

Buck set to tearing out the wild grasses that lined the property and tossing them around angrily. “$5 million dollars, Buck, really?” Eddie echoed, dumbfounded.

“Shut up.” He threw a handful of grass in Eddie’s direction. “I found a solution to your problem. You wanna go after shift? I wouldn’t mind raging right now either,” Buck groused.

*911*

Buck couldn’t stop himself from snapping a picture of Eddie in his gi and sending it to Christopher, who was enjoying a weekend with his cousins in San Jose. Jiu-Jitsu might not be a solution to all of Eddie’s problems, but it was a healthier and more disciplined way to work through the rage before it overtook him. Buck tested the padding on his hand wraps before nodding to the trainer. He couldn’t even attempt jiu-jitsu because of the blood thinners, but they offered non-contact boxing classes that were more about conditioning, form, and fitness than actual fighting. An hour on the heavybag and speedbag twice a week might expend some of the emotions and trauma of the past year. And it felt good to turn off his mind and let his body take over. More importantly, it was a way to bond with Eddie on a newer level, and maybe, hopefully, heal together.


End file.
